rted by eighty-six Parnellites. Cowardice masks itself under
the show of compromise, and men of eminent respectability yield to the
terror of being bored concessions which their forefathers would have
refused to the threat of armed rebellion. It is unnecessary to explain
how this condition of opinion, under which the best and the lowest
feelings of human nature are blended in a current of democratic
sentiment, predisposes large bodies of Englishmen towards acquiescence
in the Home Rule movement. My aim is not so much to analyse with
precision the mode in which the cause of Home Rule is fostered by the
moral atmosphere of the day, as to insist upon the all-important
consideration that the progress of the Home Rule movement is due rather
to the encouragement it derives from prevailing sentiment than to any
intellectual conviction on the part of Englishmen that it is dictated by
considerations of sound policy.

CHAPTER IV.

ENGLISH ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE.

[Sidenote: Arguments by which Home Rule policy defended.]

To lay stress upon the consideration that the Home Rule movement in
England derives its force from the condition of public feeling is not,
be it remarked, equivalent to showing that the policy of Home Rule is
unwise; still less that the policy of defended. Home Rule is unlikely to
be adopted by the nation. Masses of human beings must generally, as
individuals must often, trust to the guidance of feeling. The difference
between the sentiment which ought and the sentiment which ought not to
determine national conduct is, that the one admits and the other does
not admit of justification on grounds of reason or experience. Reasoning
is the test, not the source of wise action. Slavery was abolished, the
abuses of the _ancien regime_ were destroyed, Italian unity was created
under the stress of emotions which carried away thousands who could not
have logically defended the impulse which governed their acts. But in
these, as in other cases in which humanity has been carried forward
along the path of progress by the force of emotion, the enthusiasm of
the time could, in so far as it worked for good, be justified on
grounds of reason. Man is (difficult though it often be to believe the
fact) a rational being, in so far at least that he is constrained to
defend on argumentative grounds courses of action dictated by feeling.
From this law of human nature Home Rulers have neither the power nor, in
fairn